An Evening
by CreamTea
Summary: And still there was Desdemona.


Disclaimer: I own none of the characters but all of the scenery.

And still there was Desdemona.

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An Evening

They were lying in the high grass, their nakedness not quite as obscene as their actions. The old oak tree spread its branches into the early evening air, its shadows covering and cooling them. As Hänschen dispatched from Ernst, he saw that he'd been with a crumbling heap of joy. The boy's eyes were watering. It was disgusting, actually. "Oh Hänschen, I've never loved a soul as I love you." "Indeed, after having loved me loving someone else will not be possible, my_ love_.", Hänschen said as he watched the boy dress with trembling hands. "Are you not coming, dear Hänschen?" There was a sweetness in Ernst's question that made him wrinkle his nose. "No, you go on, dearest; they would start thinking if they saw us together all the time." With a sorrowful look, Ernst turned and walked away through the swaying grass. He failed to notice the smirk on Hänschen's face. It is doubtful whether he would have known it for what it was.

Hänschen was still naked. With him, this was quite a flattering state to be in. He lay back, grinning up into the tree. This was indeed going to be good... "Come down here, you have to sometime, you know." Somewhere above the swishing of the leaves, he heard someone's breath get caught in their throat. Hänschen stared up, high up into the tree, into wide eyes that did not seem able to blink. The braided pigtails surrounding them lashed across pink skin in the evening breeze, fogged glasses slightly askew and her lips in quite a strange way red.

"Enjoyed the show, Miss Thea?", he said while tugging at things whose existence the girl in the tree had not even in her wildest dreams suspected – until that fateful half-hour spent in a tree, into which itching curiosity had brought her. As she was picking Violets for the dinner table – innocently, ever so innocently - two laughing boys had come running up over the hill-top, where her favourite old oak stood. Beneath its branches grew some of the best violets around. They were quickly forgotten as the tall blonde tackled the smaller boy to the ground, laughing and kissing him violently; they were still far away but close enough to make blood rush to her cheeks. She prayed, she prayed – to whom? – that they might not find her, and while there would still have been time to run, she climbed the tree, her dress ripping on one of the branches, the basket of violets forgotten on the ground. When Hänschen arrived, way quicker than his companion, he picked up the basket. There were thoughts in her head she did not dare acknowledge, nor would she have ever let her fantasy provide her with them. A delirious moment was spent in thrilling fear of being found out. She needn't have worried, thought she, when all that happened was that her violets were used to welcome Ernst, flying through the air, as Hänschen threw them high up into the tree to honour, as he said, "the ever-last". And then they laughed, and they joked, and Thea's breathing grew quite calm, scolding herself for having hoped for some ... – and then it stopped entirely. She just could not breathe as Hänschen undid the other boys' vest, as eager fingers roamed his chest and came to rest at the waistband of his trousers. She tried to close her eyes, she told herself, as clothes came off, as sin was spilt under that tree, but her eyes only opened wider. There was something about father Cowbocks's sermons she understood now; never before had she felt what there was to dread... Oh, that delicious feeling, forbidden apprehension of strange, of sweet delusions! She was quite mesmerized by all that biology beneath her, forgot the time, forgot space, until Hänschen's eyes stared up at her, merciless and mischievous; and then his voice, saying that he'd known; and when he stood up he almost made her fall out of the tree.

What he had not managed, her own trembling hands did; quite suddenly, she found herself clinging to one of the branches, her feet dangling down, the meadow seeming miles away. "Want me to help you?", he said, as she shook her head vigorously. "Then jump, it's hardly more than six feet from where you are." She planned on hanging this way forever, for the rest of her life, so afraid was she of what was to await her. It might just have been the case that she anticipated the moment of two hands grasping her waist, which made her draw in a breath. For some reason, her grip loosened, and as she slowly came down, she was astonished to find that her arms had slid around his neck. There was a moment of silence, a time where she was deaf to anything but his breathing, before he kissed her, and she – may duty glory in defence – refused and pushed him hard and heard a carriage clatter along the path that wound up the hill. In a fraction of a second, Hänschen had pulled her down with him into the high grass, where she then lay, taking quick little gasps, next to a naked boy. She heard the cart no more, but then, she would not have heard a war break out, this closeness and this _smell_ made her head swim. "I asked you what you were looking at down there?", she heard, and met his smirk, an inch away, with quiet embarrassment. He looked down between their bodies, and his grin grew wider. "You have filled out quite nicely, Thea. How old will you be next month?" "18", she whispered. "18, and still maintaining such feigned innocence; dear, how time is flying..." "Feigned?", she pushed herself up on one arm. "I will enter into service of dear, holy, mother church!" He let out a laugh and folded his hands behind his head. "A nun! O why is it upon poor me alone to lead future saints astray from their part of boring, boring duty?" "Boring? Upon my word! There never was such fulfilment as serving the Lord, I'm sure!", she heard her sentence trail off into the quiet evening as he put one hand up around her neck, and guided her head down to his. "No such fulfilment? Are you quite sure?" To her horror she was quite sure when he kissed her – quite sure of only one fulfilment she hadn't had. Yet.

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When she came home that night, her mother saw her torn tress. Her red cheeks. Her messy braids. "Child!", exclaimed she, with awful premonitions, "Where have you been? It is half-nine already!" She was not soothed by the basket full of violets her daughter presented her with; a basket full of ruddy violets, which had secretly been gathered twice. Luckily mother did not see the state these flowers were in in the dim candlelight. She was still agitated after the account of how lovely the evening had been, how quietly the birds had sung; only when Thea – with dreadful minuteness – told a wild story, how she had climbed into a tree and fell down from it, how her dress had torn that way and her braids had been messed up in the process; only after soothing her mother with many words, all the while hearing a strange, happy ringing in her ears, was she satisfied, and let her daughter to her quiet nightly prayers.

They were not as honest as they should have been, that night. They were not long, or elaborate either. But in a ridiculous way, she was happier in her service than she had ever been. There was something she understood, something closer to divine than anything in this world. Something only as dirty as Jesus on the Cross, something as sweet as the resurrection after forty dire days of lent. The only thing that struck her as strange was that her salvation had the face of a tall, blonde boy and the smell of something inexplicable, unspeakable floating on the breeze into the cool night air.

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A.N.: I hope I got the religious stuff right. It really isn't my thing in real life.

Concerning the old language I used: I tried to fill some of the romantizising, sometimes lifelessly ornamented words with some, well... life. ;- ) I think I have managed.

Just to avoid misunderstandings: By "disgusting" (first paragraph) I refer to Ernst's submissiveness and that Hänschen is appalled that the boy is no challenge for him. This is NOT supposed to say that homosexuality is bad or something. I hope none of you got that wrong, seeing as that would really not have been my intention.


End file.
